1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to water purifiers used for removing various harmful materials from tap water such as city water thereby providing pure potable water.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Several types of water purifiers, which remove various harmful materials from tap water such as city water thereby providing pure potable water, have been proposed in the prior art.
FIG. 1 shows an example of typical water purifiers. As shown in the drawing, the typical water purifier includes a pre-processing filter 2 which removes various harmful organic materials such as chlorine from tap water supplied through a faucet 1. The above water purifier also includes a membrane 3 which removes various heavy metals, cancer-causing materials and bacteria from the water processed by the pre-processing filter 2. The water purifier further includes a post-processing filter 7 which removes odors such as poisonous gas from the water processed by the membrane 3.
The above water purifier is a reverse osmotic water purifier which purifies tap water using reverse osmotic pressure thereby providing pure water. However, the above water purifier has a problem in that filters such as the pre-processing filter, membrane and post-processing filter of the water purifier have to be replaced after the lapse of predetermined processing time.
In the prior art, natural-filtering type water purifiers, serial-filtering type water purifiers and ion exchange resin type water purifiers also have been proposed. However, the above water purifiers also use filters so they have the same problem in that the filters have to be replaced after the lapse of a predetermined processing time.
That is, in the typical water purifiers used for removing the harmful materials from tap water and providing pure potable water, the filters must be changed with new ones after the lapse of a predetermined processing time. The typical water purifiers are thus inconvenient to the users. Another problem of the above typical water purifiers is that if the filters are not replaced at the proper time, the operational reliability of the water purifiers will be reduced.